A technological revolution in the home is driving development for new “smart” services, including consolidation by service providers in the fields of data, voice, video, security, energy management, etc., as well as with expanding home networks. Buildings are getting smarter and more convenient as a means to reduce operational costs for enterprise facilities.
In the area of home and building automation, smart homes and buildings may provide control over virtually any device or system in the home or office, from appliances to plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) security systems. As such, in the near future, increasing development will lead to numerous ‘smart’ devices surrounding a user at home, in vehicles, at work, and in many other locations. These smart devices are increasingly popular for sensing environmental conditions, controlling equipment, and securely providing information, control, and alerts to users via applications of the network-connected devices that are connected to the cloud-based services. Various approaches are used in these systems to authenticate the identity of users of the network-connected devices and systems, to provide privacy and security for the users and user-related information. However, conventional authentication methods for identifying a user by a smart device typically require significant user participation. For example, a smart lock may be deployed in a building or other structure to provide controlled access to a protected area, such as a room, office, storage, area, etc. Conventional smart locks typically provide the user with the ability to unlock/lock the smart lock by way of their network-connected devices. Often, however, these conventional smart locks require that a dedicated application be installed on their network-connected device, where the application requires the user to provide some input for authentication (e.g., password). Furthermore, these conventional applications often communicate directly with the smart lock in order to activate the lock, which may present a security vulnerability should an un-authorized user attempt to spoof the user's device or otherwise hack into the smart lock itself.